Feeding the food crisis

The global food crisis has been called a "perfect storm" by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and a "silent tsunami" by the executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, Josette Sheeran.
Are they overstating the problem? Haitians whose protests last weekend forced their prime minister to resign would not think so. In the Philippines, where soldiers armed with M-16 rifles are guarding sales of subsidized rice, people would see hunger as a priority. The 24 people killed in food riots in Cameroon can only contribute their numbers as a silent warning.
When every disaster -- global warming, terrorism, Darfur -- competes for the front page and funding, it's hard to prioritize among them. But alarm does seem justified in the face of the most widespread hunger since the 1970s.

In the past year, a combination of soaring food prices, particularly for grain (prices for rice have increased 141 percent since January), and increased demand for food by rapidly developing nations like China have led to hunger and malnutrition across the globe.
As always, the poorest are hardest hit, but middle-class families too are affected -- forced to choose between, say, dinner on the table or paying for a child to see a doctor.
Ban and Sheeran have called for an additional $500 million to $700 million in food aid. The world's wealthier nations should get out their wallets. President Bush has asked for $200 million in emergency relief funding, which is a decent start.
But emergency aid is just that. It will take care of the short term but will not address the market problems that have caused the crisis.
Those problems include the demand for biofuel production, which may account for 6.5 percent of the worldwide consumption of this year's crop. They also include the tariffs, subsidies and other interventions that distort the international food chain in favor of the large food producers. That has hurt the small farmers who could adjust their crops to local conditions and has made poorer countries dependent on richer ones.
Because the crisis has more than one root cause, the solutions aren't simple.
On the supply side, it could help to increase both crop yields and the number of farmers in developing countries. Freeing trade from its protectionist shackles is a must, but particularly valuable would be eliminating taxes and tariffs on fertilizers that are prohibitively costly for poor farmers. Also useful would be greater international acceptance of genetically modified crops, which can offer higher, disease-free yields.
On the demand side, little can be done about the increasing demand for meat, which in turn increases demand for the grain used to feed cattle. What can be addressed are subsidies for ethanol production. While the United States needs to curb an appetite for oil that has fueled dicey policies in the Middle East, subsidies for ethanol crops add to the upward pressure on prices.
Most Americans can tolerate those higher prices, just as they will pay for biofuel-powered SUVs, but for much of the world, they're a disaster. This is not a crisis that can be solved through rock concerts or sending money. It requires fundamental changes, and the time to start making them is now.